Generally, a bus interconnects a plurality of stations and may allow various different communication patterns among those stations; in principle, a similar procedure can be followed if only a single peripheral is present. A particular example of such bus is the so-called PERIPHERAL INTERCONNECT or PI-bus that has been designed as a universal on-chip interconnection between stations that may be of diverse design origin. About the PI-bus the following electronic information is available on INTERNET:
www.sussex.ac.uk/engg/research/vlsi/projects/pibus/index.html
Given the fact that the stations may fulfil various diverse slave functions, they must be interconnected in a straightforward and unencumbring manner; in particular, bus load should be kept low.
In consequence, amongst other things, it is an object of the present invention to provide a Slave Group Interface device that offers a generic interface to all or most peripheral types, and furthermore having the system require only modest bus transfer facilities.
Now therefore, according to one of its aspects the invention is characterized according to the characterizing part of claim 1. The xe2x80x98information bitsxe2x80x99 may include data as well as addresses and the xe2x80x98readxe2x80x99 and xe2x80x98writexe2x80x99 functionalities are defined from the viewpoint of the bus. The read data will need only a narrow channel independent of the number of peripherals, write data and read data may use the same channel, and also the control signal channel may be kept relatively narrow.
The invention also relates to a system for implementing such method, and to a Slave Group Interface device arranged for use with such method. Further advantageous aspects of the invention are recited in dependent Claims.